


Lucky One

by SuperBlondie



Category: EXO (Band)
Genre: Action, Blood, Dark, Death, Do not read if the tags make you uncomfortable, Gore, Graphic Violence, Heed the tags and warnings, Horror, M/M, Minor Character Death, Monsters, This is very dark, Thriller, Violence, Wendigo, Werewolves, Zombies, cabin in the woods au, like REALLY dark
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-20
Updated: 2018-10-20
Packaged: 2019-08-04 17:53:51
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 20,868
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16351334
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/SuperBlondie/pseuds/SuperBlondie
Summary: He runs and runs and runs. There's no end in sight, no destination, just running and running.He waits. He has waited for a long, long time. All ends lead to him. Won't be long now.





	Lucky One

**Author's Note:**

> Okay so this is really really dark. Like maybe the darkest thing I've ever written. And I LOVED it! This is one of my favorite things to have ever written. This thing kinda came to life in late summer as an outline I vomited out to Aarushi over text and eventually came into being. It came into being...very fast...over the course of a few weeks once i got past the first like 3k. So it just kind of forced itself out of my body and I am happy with it. I hope you like it too!!!
> 
> WARNING!!! Heed all the warnings and tags!!! (If you seen anything I should tag, PLEASE tell me so I can tag appropriately and make sure readers know what they're getting into.) But, by choosing to go past this point, you are saying that you read my tags and this warning and understand what you're getting into. Do NOT come to me upset over something I tagged. (if I didn't tag, please come to me and let me know!!) You ignored my warnings, not my fault.
> 
> As always, thank you [Aarushi](https://twitter.com/AarushiC_18) for betaing like 35 pages of fic in 4 days. What a fuckin champ!! And for helping me with the title and the summary and making the ending fit better. And everything because you dealt with me vomiting this outline at you at like 6AM your time as;ldjfalj

He turns a corner. It looks just like the last one, and the one before that and the one before that and every other corner he's turned since he woke up. Everything looks the same here, gleaming white walls and floors. They shine brightly under the harsh lights and reflect a distorted version of himself back whenever he looks. He has no way of knowing where he's coming from or where he's going. It's all the same.

Except for the blood. Further down this hallway are more smears of red along the walls, along the floors. Kyungsoo really, really hates the blood. Sometimes it's old and the blood isn't much more than a brown stain against the white. Sometimes it's new and if he stops running he knows he'll be able to see it running down the walls and pooling on the floor.

He doesn't stop.

His footsteps echo off the walls and it's so loud he doesn't know how anyone hasn't come to find him yet. He knows he's not alone in here. He literally can't be. The metal cuff locked around his arm reads _3_ and that must mean there are at least two more. There can't be _3_ without _1_ and _2_. Unless _1_ and _2_ are where all the blood is coming from.

There's a terrified, twisted part of him way down deep that wonders if the people who put him here gave him _3_ to make him think he's not alone. If all the blood is fake and he's just running around an endless maze all by himself until he goes insane.

Kyungsoo turns another corner and realizes he might already be losing his mind. It's all the same and he can't stop running because there's a screaming in his brain that tells him he has to _survive._

He isn't meant to be here. He doesn't even know how he got here in the first place. Kyungsoo remembers walking to car from the grocery store at night with his arms full of ingredients for the chicken noodle soup his mom finally sent him the recipe for. He remembers shifting around to try and pull his car keys out of his pocket under a street lamp and then waking up to glaring lights and bright white walls.

That might be the scariest part of all. Scarier than being alone, scarier than the blood. He has no idea why or how he ended up in this endless maze of white walls and white floors and that shakes him to his core.

But he keeps running. It's all he can think to do. What else can he do? Stop and wait? Turn around and try to retrace his steps? All he can do is keep running and hope that he finds the exit or another person before he loses his mind.

Kyungsoo starts to count how many turns he takes. He loses count after twenty. It's an endless maze and he starts losing any hope of getting out at all. He swears he's been through this hallway before, but it looks just like the rest of them and now even the smears of red are starting to blur together.

It's been hours. Or maybe minutes. He could have been in here for days or maybe just a few seconds. He doesn't know.

Kyungsoo loses his footing as he makes a left turn and trips, falling face first to the floor. He manages to break his fall with his arms, but the momentum sends him sliding along the ground and he regrets not wearing long sleeves. As if he could have planned for this when he got dressed this morning. His arms burn from the friction and he shoves the pain away. It's not important right now, not when he's trapped in a maze with no way out. Kyungsoo pushes himself back up and freezes.

Red. It's just red, red, _red_. This isn't just a smear now, it's a trail of blood the disappears down the corridor and around the corner. Kyungsoo scrambles backwards and tries to remember how to breathe. There's blood on the walls, smeared handprints like someone was trying to push themselves forward and away. Like someone was trying to find something to hold onto while they were dragged away.

Kyungsoo leans to the side and retches. Nothing comes up, but he wishes something would have. Maybe that would ease the nausea in his stomach.

He could follow the blood. It's still pretty fresh and would probably lead him to another person. He wouldn't be alone anymore. But his legs shake when he pushes himself to stand up and he can't. He can't follow the blood. Kyungsoo hates himself for being such a coward but he turns away anyway. There has to be more than one person at the end of that trail and he's not sure all – _any_ of them are even remotely friendly.

So he turns around and takes off at a sprint in the opposite direction. Guilt eats at him but he's too scared. He can't make himself go back. Kyungsoo's not a hero; he just wants to go home to his dogs and call his parents and tell them how much he loves them. He just wants to survive until he can get out of here.

This hallway is longer than most of the others he's run through. He doesn't understand how this maze is laid out, with the left turn being so short and the right turn being so long, but it puts more and more distance between him and the blood, and that's okay with him.

When he finally reaches the end of the corridor, he skids to a stop. There's no blood this time. Good, Kyungsoo could live the rest of his life without seeing blood ever again. But there's _something_ poking out from around the corner. It's too far away to make out and Kyungsoo forces himself to take a half-step forward. It's still too far away.

Kyungsoo lets out a shaky breath. He shouldn't be here. He just wants to go home. He crouches and slowly scoots forward along the ground. It's a foot. A human foot. He freezes in place, waiting, _hoping_ , the foot will move and he won't be alone anymore.

He waits. The foot never moves. The toes don't curl or twitch.

"Hello," Kyungsoo whispers into the silence, "are you real?" There's no answer. He drops onto his hands and knees and crawls forward. "I'm Kyungsoo. I'm not – are you hurt? I can try to help you. Please, please be a person."

A growl, guttural and wet in a way growls shouldn't be, echoes off the walls. It's so quiet and the hallways are so narrow that the sound bounces around wildly. Kyungsoo can't tell if it's close or if it's far away. He can't tell if it's in front of him or behind him. His heart beats so loudly in his chest that he wonders if the sound of it is echoing off the walls too. He forces himself to crawl that much farther and peek around the corner.

He slaps a hand over his mouth to cover his scream. There's just _so much_ _blood_. It's everywhere. Covering everything. Red and shiny and he knows it's sticky because it's sticking to the thing crouched over the body. The body that's been ripped open like Kyungsoo thought only happened in horror movies and crime shows. The body that's halfway down the hall from the foot Kyungsoo saw first. There's a cuff like the one on Kyungsoo's wrist not far from the foot, _5_ gleaming up at him covered in red.

Kyungsoo sobs into his hand and tries not vomit. The world turns blurry through his tears but he watches, frozen in the terror that has reached inside his chest and crushed his lungs flat, as the creature crouching over the body turns to look at him.

He blinks and the tears run down his cheeks. He can see, and that makes him cry harder. Kyungsoo _screams_. He begs for this to be a dream, tells himself to wake up and call Jongin and talk to his best friend about the horrible dream he had.

But he doesn't wake up. Not when he begs himself to, not when he uses the hand covering his mouth to pinch his cheek.

He isn't dreaming. This is real, the body down the hall is real. The zombie eating that body is real too. It's real and it's staring right at him. Kyungsoo wonders how something that's not a dream managed to bring his worst fear to life. And then he realizes he's starting to get hysterical and he forces himself to think, to _survive._ There's a man-eating monster staring him down and he'll die if he doesn't force himself to think. Fight or flight, no time to freeze.

Then the zombie growls grumpily at him and goes back to eating. There's no interest in its eyes. Kyungsoo's arms shake so hard he nearly collapses onto his face. The zombie wants nothing to do with him and it makes no sense but Kyungsoo isn't willing to question it.

He pushes himself up onto shaky legs instead and starts walking backwards. He keeps his mouth covered, keeps his sounds muffled just in case. If there's a zombie here, there could be anything.

The cuff on the floor gleams up at him. _5_. Kyungsoo wonders how many of people are stuck here. _5_ is here, probably long dead. There was another person at the end of the blood trail, probably. How many are there? He thinks about how big the maze must be to keep at least five people separated so well and feels sick. He feels like he'll never get out. _5_ didn't get out, and they were so much further along than him. Kyungsoo decides he'll think about it later, when he's far, far away from the zombie and the blood.

He's nearly around the corner when a scream unlike anything he's ever heard pierces his ears. He claps his hands over his ears to block out the sound but it's useless because it's so _loud_ and high-pitched that he can't even think while it's ringing in his ears.

It feels like it goes on forever, a sustained, painful note that rattles his brain and chills him to the marrow of his bones. When it stops, he slumps against the wall and tries to catch his breath. Relief courses sluggishly through his veins. It's over. Whatever it was, it's over. He's safe.

And then a sound crackles over a loudspeaker Kyungsoo didn't even know existed. He hadn't heard it before, but it must've gone off when _5_ died because – “ _Four has been eliminated_. _Next phase starting…now._ "

Kyungsoo slowly turns his head back towards the body and the zombie; his legs nearly give out from underneath him and prays to whatever god might be listening that the pieces clicking into place in his mind are wrong. He prays that he has missed the mark by a mile, that he has jumped to a conclusion so ridiculous it simply can't be right.

The zombie slowly stands up from its meal and snarls at him, wild and animalistic. It takes a few shuffling, staggering steps towards him. Kyungsoo doesn't wait to see it come any closer. _5_ is dead, _4_ is dead, and he's _3._ He doesn't want to die. He turns on his heel and sprints back the way he came, the hallways blurring into a thin white halo around his rapidly narrowing field of vision. He’s panicking at the worst time, air sticking in his throat and refusing to be pulled down into his lungs where he needs it. Kyungsoo gasps for air and begs his body to cooperate with him for just this one moment. But his legs are tired from running through the halls when he first woke up. Kyungsoo curses himself for running back when there was nothing actually chasing him.

He runs back down the hallway and looks behind him to see the zombie shuffling after him. It’s not fast enough to catch him if he keeps running. So he keeps running. He keeps running even when his legs beg him to stop. He’s never been an athlete and the stress and sudden use have his muscles cramping with each step, but he doesn’t stop running.

Which is good, because Kyungsoo turns the corner to go back to the rest of the maze just as creatures spill out of the blood-covered hallway _4_ must’ve been down.

There are more zombies, faster than the one that was eating _5_. Still not fast enough to catch him if he keeps running, but they’re fast and move faster when they see him. The other thing – Kyungsoo trips and slams into the wall but forces himself to keep moving. His chest seizes up and he puts his head down and _runs_. Because the thing looks like a person without a face and it has four arms and four legs; it crawls around like a spider and it’s so _fast._ Kyungsoo runs as fast as his body will let him and he can still hear it gaining on him.

He starts taking turns as fast as he can, hoping the thing will go too fast and throw itself off-balance. Or maybe miss his turn and have to backtrack. Kyungsoo hopes with his entire being but he still hears the thuds of the thing’s hands and feet hitting the ground.

“Help me,” he whispers, “God, somebody help me, please.”

Then there’s a loud crack and Kyungsoo looks over his shoulder to see the thing slam into the wall. It’s nearly touching the ceiling, hitting the wall so high up that the thud when it hits the ground is even louder. Relief pours over him. God was listening for once. Or maybe the thing thought it was closer to catching him than it actually was and missed him when it lunged. He doesn’t care either way. All that matters is that the thing has to struggle to get it’s limbs coordinated again and he can put as much distance between them as he can. He turns another corner.

There’s old blood down this hallway. He thinks he’s been this way before but he doesn’t remember it. There’s a metal pipe resting against the wall, maybe three feet long and shiny like it’s brand new. Kyungsoo has a brief, fleeting thought that maybe there’s a reason this pipe is here. There’s more to the thought, but it’s gone before he even finishes thinking it because the pipe is a weapon and he’s going to _die_ if he doesn’t take it. He has to survive.

Kyungsoo grabs the pipe as he’s running and stumbles with the new weight he has to balance. It’s not a big stumble, not enough to cost him any real time, but even a fraction of a second matters now.

His legs scream for rest as his sides begin cramping so hard he nearly doubles over. He grits his teeth and tries to push through. He doesn’t have the time to rest. He doesn’t have the time to think. He just has to keep running.

It feels like he’s been running for hours by the time he realizes that the hallway is the longest one he’s been through so far. The walls get darker as he goes, dirtier. Everything’s turning grey and he doesn’t know what that means. It could mean he’s getting out. It could mean he’s heading towards a door to the outside where there’s dirt and grime and no monsters hungry for his flesh. Or it could mean he’s running right into the lair of another monster, because there could be millions of creatures roaming the maze and he’s only run into five.

Kyungsoo sees the air distorting up ahead. The light is bending and refracting like the heat vapors he used to watch from his front door as a kid. It’s beautiful and shimmery and Kyungsoo can slowly feel the air heating as he gets closer and closer. They _are_ heat waves. Heat waves in an indoor maze. And past the heat waves is a big, metal door, a dirty dark grey that is only set apart from the rest of the shadows that have started grow. A _door_. Kyungsoo sobs in relief and pushes himself that much faster.

The heat grows and grows as he runs. It’s uncomfortable, then hot, then sweltering, then _burning_. The skin of his arms tingles like it’s being scorched but he can’t make himself stop. Kyungsoo either runs forward and takes a chance with whatever’s behind the door or he tries to defend himself from five creatures with the metal pipe.

He takes a chance.

The heat waves should’ve been the hottest part. Kyungsoo knows he should be screaming as he runs through them and skids into the metal door. But he isn’t.

Cool air blows over his skin as he forces himself towards the door, and he can feel that it’s hot outside of this breeze, but he can’t actually _feel_ the heat. He doesn’t care. He’s too frantic, hands shaking and jerking out of his control as he tries to open the door. The thing and the zombies are following after him through the blistering heat and he doesn’t have time to consider how strange the cold air was. Everything since he woke up has been a strange, hellish nightmare he just wants to be _over_.

The latch holding the door clicks and he shoves it open, squeezing his body through the crack in the door. He throws his metal pipe onto the ground and starts throwing his body at the door to force it closed. It’s heavy and his eyes screw shut as he struggles to put the thick slab of metal between him and the monsters. When it slams shut, he forces the latch back down.

He opens his eyes to utter darkness.

He can barely see his hand when he holds it in front of his face and the heavy sound of his panting hangs in the air. Kyungsoo rests against the door to catch his breath and calm his heart back down. The darkness doesn’t help. If something comes after him, all he’ll have to track it is any sounds it might make, and he wouldn’t be surprised if he’s being hunted by creatures that know how to be quiet. Just one silent, creeping thing and he’ll die.

Kyungsoo’s panting morphs into something like sobbing. He covers his mouth with his hand to try and muffle the sound. His hands are shaking so hard he nearly drops the metal pipe as he goes to pick it up, metal on concrete echoing so _loudly_.

Hours could have passed in the time it takes him to push off the door and start walking again. But he does start walking again. Nothing shines red in the dim light and it’s enough to make his feet move forward. His footsteps shriek, the scrape of the sole of his shoe against the concrete bouncing off the walls; he pauses after every step just in case the sound draws something to him. He feels like prey, like a deer always two seconds from sprinting to safety. Except there’s nowhere safe for him to go.

The door starts to rattle on his hinges just as he comes to a turn, one hand dragging along a wall to tell him where to go. He turns but sees nothing. It’s too dark to see much of anything, much less the door at the other end of the hall. Kyungsoo hears it though, he hears it painfully clear. The metal thuds as its goes out and bangs when it settles back, metal on stone piercing his ears.

All the walls are stone here. It was all cold, white plastic before, and now it’s metal and stone and darkness. Kyungsoo almost likes it better. He doesn’t know if he’s being chased now and ignorance is bliss.

But he runs when the door starts pound because he knows what’s on the other side of the door and he doesn’t – he _can’t_ face that again. Kyungsoo breaks into another run and forces his legs to keep up with what he wants. He can be sore another day, a day when he’s safe in his apartment and far, far away from the _things_ on the other side of the door.

He keeps one hand on the wall to keep him going straight, keep him from slamming into a wall with the metal pipe between him and the stone. Kyungsoo shifts his hold on the pipe to keep it at his side instead, flashes of what it might look like, _feel_ like, to be impaled appearing in his mind. And then he stumbles, gagging as images of blood and flesh strewn across white floors assault him from all sides.

Kyungsoo stumbles around the corner, still trying to catch his bearings. “You alright?” The metal pipe goes swinging through the air and Kyungsoo feels it connect. The vibrations are so strong they rattle his bones and he _knows_ he hit something. But the shadow in the darkness doesn’t fall. “Be more careful, you could’ve hit me.”

Kyungsoo did hit him. Kyungsoo hit him pretty fucking hard. But the person – he thinks it’s a man, there’s something in his voice that makes him think it’s a man. The man just steps closer and his teeth shine in the dark. “Are you…” Kyungsoo trails off, not sure what to say.

“Number Two,” the man says, “that’s what the thing on my arm says, at least. But I prefer to be called Baekhyun, if that’s no trouble to you.” His voice is playful. How is it playful? After the things Kyungsoo’s seen tonight, he doesn’t know if he’ll ever be able to be playful again. The door is still banging on its hinges in the background. Baekhyun must hear it too. Why isn’t he scared? Kyungsoo tenses and gets ready to run again.

Then Baekhyun is grabbing him by the wrist and pulling Kyungsoo after him. “Come with me, Chanyeol and I found a room with pretty decent light. Not great, but better than the hallways.” Kyungsoo stumbles after him, feet tripping over each other. He nearly falls once and Baekhyun stops. “You want me to carry you? You seem a little tired,” Baekhyun reaches over and tucks a stray lock of Kyungsoo’s hair behind his ear, fingers sliding over his skin in the dark. “And what’s your name? Or your number, I guess? Chanyeol and I haven’t figured out the numbers thing yet. It probably doesn’t mean anything but can’t hurt to know, right?”

 “K-kyungsoo. And Three.”

“Kyungsoo? That’s a pretty name.” Kyungsoo mumbles an awkward thanks and follows after Baekhyun, struck dumb by his carefree attitude. It’s like Baekhyun doesn’t even know how much danger they’re all in. Him and Kyungsoo and this Chanyeol person. Kyungsoo thinks he’ll break apart if he loses the momentum that’s been keeping him going but Baekhyun is laughing, making jokes as he pulls Kyungsoo through pitch black corridors.

Kyungsoo wonders how he knows where he’s going, but the thought is trapped under layers of stomach-curdling fear and an odd sense of relief at not being alone anymore. Maybe that’s why he goes with Baekhyun so easily. Baekhyun hasn’t tried to kill him and is _talking_ to him and suddenly it’s not just all of Kyungsoo’s fear trapped in the echo chamber of his mind. Baekhyun’s a person, trapped here like him, and he – he’s kind. He asks if Kyungsoo needs help walking or if he wants to climb onto Baekhyun’s back.

The isolation, short as it was, made Kyungsoo desperate for human contact. His hand shakes where Baekhyun’s holding it but some of the adrenaline fades as he recognizes he’s not fighting for his life by himself anymore.

Maybe that’s why he holds Baekhyun’s hand in his own with an iron grip like he’ll shatter if Baekhyun leaves him alone again. He can’t be alone again.

The hallways become more and more lit as they walk. Each turn makes it easier and easier to see and Kyungsoo is able to make out Baekhyun’s silhouette in front of him. He looks like he’s Kyungsoo’s size, maybe a little taller. The light is still dim but Kyungsoo can tell that Baekhyun’s hair is light, maybe blonde. He knows lots of Korean men dye their hair – he used to help Jongin dye his hair back in high school. It still seems a little out of place here.

Everything is so dark in here and Baekhyun’s hair is so light. Baekhyun seems out of place. Baekhyun seems like he doesn’t belong here, not in the way that Kyungsoo feels like he doesn’t belong here, kept here against his will. Baekhyun seems like he doesn’t belong here like he’s a lie, he’s not what he says he is.

Kyungsoo has only seen his teeth reflecting light back at him in the darkness. He’s never seen Baekhyun’s face, never seen with his own two eyes that Baekhyun is a human. Books of scary stories from when he was just old enough to stomach real horror flash behind his eyes when he blinks. Kyungsoo remembers stories of fae that seemed so kind, so helpful as they led lost travelers through the forest. He remembers feeling sick to his stomach when the fae led the travelers right into a trap or turned on them and tore them to pieces.

He stops in his tracks. Baekhyun tugs on his hand once before stopping too. He turns around and Kyungsoo’s heart lurches in his chest as the shadows turn Baekhyun’s face into something sinister. He draws in a breath to scream; Baekhyun tilts his head to the side and the shadows slip to show a handsome, worried man Kyungsoo’s age.

“You okay, Kyungsoo?” Kyungsoo lets out the breath in a huff instead of a scream. Baekhyun looks human. He looks genuinely concerned; he looks trustworthy. Kyungsoo nods, mumbling about getting spooked by a shadow. Baekhyun smiles and Kyungsoo has to squint to see it. “Alright, just let me know if you need any help.”

Kyungsoo starts walking again when Baekhyun tugs at his hand. They walk side-by-side this time. He watches Baekhyun out of the corner of his eye and feels his heart slow at the easy, confident way Baekhyun walks through the halls. It makes Kyungsoo let his own shoulders relax and he straightens his spine; for a little while, he doesn’t hear the metal door banging on its hinges or the growl of the zombie ringing in his ears.

They come to another metal door. There’s enough light to see the handles and the chain-link fence resting in front of the door. Baekhyun lets go of Kyungsoo’s hand, “Stay right here. I’ve gotta move the fence to get to the door.” Kyungsoo has to stop himself from chasing after Baekhyun’s hand.

He feels like he’s floating somewhere outside of his body without Baekhyun’s hand on his to ground him and remind him that he’s there in that moment.

Baekhyun grabs the chain-link fence with one hand, muttering to himself about something Kyungsoo can’t hear. He catches words, just _sweet_ and _careful_ , but nothing else. “You need any help with that,” Kyungsoo asks as Baekhyun starts lifting the chain-link fence. It could be surprisingly light, Kyungsoo doesn’t know, because Baekhyun lifts the whole thing off the ground with one hand. The fence is long enough that it spans from one wall to the other. It doesn’t matter that it might be light than it seems, that’s still a lot of metal to maneuver. “Here, let me-”

“I told you to stay, Kyungsoo,” Baekhyun’s head snaps around to him and Kyungsoo freezes in place. There’s something not right about his eyes. But then it falls away to a smile as Baekhyun swings the chain-link fence around to rest against the wall. “Sorry if I snapped at you, just didn’t want you to get hit by the fence is all!” Then Baekhyun pushes opens the metal door and waves for Kyungsoo to follow

Kyungsoo follows. He doesn’t know what else to do. Baekhyun, urges him through the door first, apologizing for snapping again. The fence gets moved back into place and then the door is pulled closed again, this time bolted shut. Then he starts grabbing the largest solid objects he can find and barricading the door shut. There’s no way the monsters could get through that, not without them hearing about it. It’s the most soothing thing Kyungsoo’s seen so far. “Go on ahead, Soo, just yell for Chanyeol and let him know that you’re safe.”

“You sure it’s safe? None of the things could’ve gotten through the door while you were out in the hallways?”

Kyungsoo wonders why Baekhyun had been out in the hallways in the first place when it’s obvious he had somewhere safe to hide. This little area is industrial, full of metal slabs, wires, wooden planks, and other things Kyungsoo can’t make out in the darkness; it’s full of things to use to barricade the door. If he’d had one of these places to hide back in the white hallways, especially with another person to keep him company, he would’ve never left.

Baekhyun looks up at him with a strange smile on his face. It’s almost disbelieving but Kyungsoo thinks that can’t be right. “Things? What things? It’s just me, you, and Chanyeol in here.”

“What about the zombies? The spider thing? And there was other stuff chasing me but I didn’t see it. But there are _things_ out there.”

Baekhyun shakes his head, “Haven’t seen anything like that. I walked those hallways for a while and you were the only person I found. Chanyeol woke up before me and he hasn’t seen anything either.” Kyungsoo doesn’t know how to take that. He _knows_ what he saw. It’ll haunt him for the rest of his life, but he knows he saw it. The zombies were real, the blood and the dead body of _5_ was real. Kyungsoo doesn’t know what his face must look like, but it has Baekhyun coming close and wrapping him in a loose hug.

The comfort feels almost disturbingly nice. Kyungsoo sags into the hug for just a second and Baekhyun laughs quietly. When he pulls away, Kyungsoo feels a little more centered. But Baekhyun still looks him in the eye, “I’m not saying you didn’t see what you saw – if you say you saw it, then you saw it. We all woke up in this place with numbered bracelets, you know? Anything could happen.”

Kyungsoo nods. Anything could happen. Anything _has_ happened, if he’s honest. Never in his wildest dreams would he imagine a creature like that human-spider. That should count as anything.

“Chanyeol and I have been awake for hours haven’t seen anything. To the best of our knowledge, the monsters that you saw only exist on your side of the door. So, to answer your question, I am completely sure that you’re safe in here.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t remember telling Baekhyun about the door.

But that’s lost under the gentle way Baekhyun pushes him farther into the new hallways with a smile. “I’ll catch up with you in a minute. Go find somewhere to rest, you deserve it.”

Kyungsoo goes, walking slowly. He checks around every corner and keeps the metal pole clutched tight to his chest. Even with Baekhyun’s reassurance, Kyungsoo still feels a lingering sense that there’s something not human, not right, watching him. It feels so close; the hairs on the back of his neck stand on end. But nothing ever shows and eventually the feeling disappears.

It’s just leftover paranoia. He tells himself that. He’s just paranoid. As if he doesn’t have every reason to believe something inhuman could be following after him.

“Uh,” Kyungsoo starts once he can’t hear Baekhyun barricading the door shut anymore. He remembers Baekhyun’s warning to let Chanyeol know who he is and that he’s coming. “My name is Do Kyungsoo and I’m a human?” He doesn’t know why it comes out as a question.

“Are you asking or telling me?” A voice echoes off the walls. It sounds like whoever is speaking is _trying_ to be serious but finds things too amusing to keep his composure. Kyungsoo doesn’t understand it. He can’t imagine laughing now, not when he sees blood and open chest cavities whenever he closes his eyes. Baekhyun mentioned that they hadn’t seen any monsters though – makes sense that they’re not so fucking traumatized.

Kyungsoo keeps walking, cheeks burning. “Telling you. I’m not a monster or anything. B-Baekhyun told me to come find you.”

A figure steps out of seemingly nowhere, melting out from the shadows on the wall. Kyungsoo is screaming before he can stop himself, throwing himself backward and cocking his arm back to throw the pole. “Woah,” the figure shouts, “it’s okay! It’s just me!” He thinks it’s the figure.

Kyungsoo stays tense. The figure steps closer and he tightens his grip on the pole. His fingers slip, sweat making it hard to keep his grip, and he hopes he’ll be able to hold on long enough to escape. The dim overhead lights flicker and threaten to give out. Kyungsoo silently begs them not to. He doesn’t want to die in darkness, not when there’s a creature nearly twice his size walking towards him. It stalks closer, feet dragging against the stone floors so loudly. It comes closer and closer. Even in the dark, Kyungsoo can see how its body jerks with each step, shoulders shuddering. The closer it gets, the larger it seems; it’s been stretched too thin, faint silhouette elongated in a way humans – humans don’t look like that. Humans don’t have horns either.

“Hey, there you are!” Kyungsoo startles, slashing at the air in a frenzy. He doesn’t hit anything and that just makes everything that much worse. “It’s okay! It’s okay!” Kyungsoo spins on his heel to find another person standing barely a foot away. But it’s a person. Kyungsoo can see their face, that’s a person. “Jesus Christ, what the hell is wrong with you?”

“The…the,” Kyungsoo trails off as he catches his breath, trying to force his heart rate back down. Chanyeol watches him like _he’s_ the strange one.

And maybe he is. Maybe he’s strange, the odd one out, because the only one out of the three of them who’s been chased down and hunted like prey. But he isn’t the only one. _4_ and _5_ were hunted down too. The only difference between him and them is that he’s still alive. And if he dies, he’s not dying alone. He knows there are people to remember him if the monsters catch up to him. They’ll remember him until the monsters turn and chase them down too.

All at once, everything feels useless. _4_ and _5_ made it farther into the white hallways than he did and they still died. Why is he any different? Why should he live when they died? He may have managed to leave the white hallways and find a few moments refuge in the dark hallways, but they’re just that – a few moments of refuge. The monsters are going to come after him again.

A monster found him here.

 _A monster found him here_. He turns back towards the shadows and the horned shadow creature. But it’s gone. The shadows are just shadows once again and Kyungsoo feels like he’s losing his mind. He stares at the empty darkness and wonders if he hasn’t already lost it.

“You guys found each other!” Baekhyun jogs toward them, footsteps thudding quietly. Chanyeol – he has to be Chanyeol – nods. He hasn’t lost that strange look in his eye, the frown that screams wariness. Kyungsoo looks to Baekhyun. He doesn’t remember his eyes shining like that before. He explains it away by the smile and faint sheen of sweat on his forehead. “Kyungsoo, this Chanyeol. Chanyeol, this Kyungsoo – _3_ , if we’re going by bracelets.”

Kyungsoo nods along absentmindedly, a little lost in his own head. How didn’t Chanyeol see that creature? Did it disappear as soon as Kyungsoo looked away? Was it even there in the first place?

“What were you staring at, Kyungsoo?”

Kyungsoo looks up at Chanyeol. There’s a wall of distrust twelve feet high in his eyes and Kyungsoo doesn’t blame him. If Kyungsoo wasn’t so desperate for human contact, he wouldn’t trust anyone either. Still, he gestures to the darkness and mumbles something about a creature. And then he takes a deep breath and steadies himself. He saw what he saw. He didn’t make it up – he _couldn’t_ make it up. He saw what he saw. “There was something in the shadows. Really tall, horns.”

Baekhyun smiles and rubs gentle circles between Kyungsoo’s shoulder blades. It helps but Kyungsoo can’t shake the dread making itself at home in his rib cage.

He’s had too much time to come down from the adrenaline and now he’s paying for it. The emotions and exhaustion hit him like trucks and all he wants to do is go home and rest. But he can’t, so he settles for sagging against Baekhyun and trying to force the flashes of blood and decaying flesh and that human-spider out of his mind. “I saw it,” he whispers, “I swear I did.”

Chanyeol softens almost instantaneously. “What the hell happened to you, huh? Here, give me the pole and let your arms rest. We’ve got a nice little area set up not too far from here where you can sit down. Got enough light that I can make sure you didn’t hurt yourself waving this thing around like a fuckin’ crazy person too.” There’s the amusement again. Chanyeol doesn’t understand. Kyungsoo doesn’t think he wants Chanyeol to understand. Kyungsoo has seen things no one should ever have to see.

Kyungsoo lets himself be led through a maze of hallways. Chanyeol leads the way, whining about how heavy the metal pole is, about how he doesn’t understand how Kyungsoo carried it for so long.

“Sounds like you saw a wendigo,” Baekhyun murmurs from his place at Kyungsoo’s side. Kyungsoo looks over, amazed. “They’re a thing in America. Tall and stretched out like someone took a normal person and _pulled_. And the horns. Probably good you didn’t see anymore. All the legends described them as terrifying.”

Kyungsoo didn’t even have to see the wendigo to know it was terrifying. But he nods along because he feels a little less crazy with Baekhyun putting a name to what he saw. He still doesn’t understand why it left though.

Finally, the hallway opens up to a room. It’s not that large, most of the space taken up by tanks and machines, but there’s a mattress in the middle of the floor. It’s dirty and probably older than Kyungsoo; he doesn’t complain when Baekhyun guides him over to it and gently pushes him to sit down. It’s so much brighter here than anywhere else in the dark hallways. The white hallways are brighter, but he prefers this. This lighting is soft and gentle and doesn’t make him think of blood smeared along the walls. It feels like moonlight.

He looks up and sees a skylight, the moon peering down at him from its place in the sky. “Oh my God,” he yells and jumps to feet. If they can get up that high, they could escape. Freedom is _so close_. “Do we have any ladders? O-or maybe we can climb on the machine? Try and find a way to scale the walls?” The moon is _right there_.

Chanyeol grabs him by the shoulders pulls him out from under the skylight. He makes soft shushing sounds and tries to turn Kyungsoo’s focus away from the moon. But Chanyeol doesn’t understand. He hasn’t see what Kyungsoo he has seen. Kyungsoo would give _anything_ to be free again. To be far, far away from monsters chasing him down. He’s _3,_ he’s the next one they’re after.

“We can’t get up that high. Trust us, we’ve tried. We can’t get up that high, Kyungsoo.”

“But it’s _right there_ ,” Kyungsoo tries to twist out of Chanyeol’s grip but he’s held fast. “Freedom is _right there_.”

“I know. And the second we find a way out, we’re all leaving. But that’s not a way out. Please, sit back down. You need to relax for a little while. Baekhyun, help?”

Baekhyun wraps his arms around Kyungsoo’s waist and pulls him close. “You’re okay. You’re gonna get out of here, just not right now. Trust me, alright?” The fight leaves him in a rush and he feels so hollow. People aren’t meant to handle this kind of stress. Kyungsoo rest his head on Baekhyun’s shoulder and lets himself cry out the frustration and the fear. “I’ll get you out of here,” Baekhyun whispers, “I promise. You’re gonna get out of here and be at home, asleep in your own bed with your dogs before the sun comes up. You just gotta listen to me. I’m on your side, Soo, you’re okay.”

Kyungsoo nods. Baekhyun lets him cry for those few minutes until the tears dry up. Kyungsoo feels better, lighter. He doesn’t feel like he’s shouldering the burden all on his own. Baekhyun _promised._

All three of them end up huddled on the mattress together. Kyungsoo leaning on Baekhyun and slowly coming back to himself and Chanyeol stretching his almost absurdly long body across whatever space is left. For a few minutes, it feels like he’s trapped in a limbo of alive and dead.

“Can you tell us about what happened to you,” Chanyeol asks. Baekhyun shushes him when he tenses. “Might help us understand what you’re dealing with.” Chanyeol rolls over on his stomach to prop his chin up on his fist with a smile.

Kyungsoo hesitates. He doesn’t want to put that on anyone else. He doesn’t think he’ll ever forget that visceral, instinctive horror at seeing _5_ broken open and devoured. But he needs them to tell him he’s not crazy. He needs them to understand what kind of hell they’re trapped in. What danger they’re all in. So he starts off slow.

Kyungsoo starts with the white hallways and smears of blood, then he talks about the hallway covered in handprints. He talks about how he could tell someone had been dragged away. He pauses then; he could’ve helped _4_ like Baekhyun helped him. He could’ve given them even a few minutes of support to make their last moments a little easier. It’s hard to talk after that.

Everything hits him at once and slows him down. He's underwater but the water is molasses and even his thoughts are sluggish and disjointed. It wasn't his fault – no one could have expected him to put himself in danger like that. That doesn't mean he doesn't hate himself, just a little, for not helping them.

"They were likely bleeding out by the time you saw the blood," Baekhyun shrugs. He tips his head to Chanyeol, who furrows his brows in confusion. His eyes widen and then he's nodding, saying that Kyungsoo couldn't have done anything to save them.

"Mhm, people can only lose so much blood before it’s impossible to save them."

"If there was as much blood as you remember, there was literally medically nothing you could have done. It was just a matter of time. You probably would've gotten yourself killed if you'd gone after them – you've got good survival instincts."

A tiny thing, something barely resembling a smile, pulls at his lips. The guilt doesn't leave entirely. Kyungsoo still left someone to die and that's something he's going to have to live with, but his brain finds it hard to twist the guilt into hate when Baekhyun and Chanyeol are telling him it's not his fault. Kyungsoo starts again, wading out of the molasses in little steps.

Chanyeol gasps when Kyungsoo mentions the zombie, mentions trying so hard not cry because he was scared to draw attention to himself. Kyungsoo stutters his way through his descriptions of the monsters that chased him. He tries and fails to describe the sound the zombie made when it snarled at him.

Baekhyun picks at the denim over Kyungsoo's knees and points out the dark brown of dried blood. "Must've kneeled in it at some point."

"Oh my God," Kyungsoo whispers. He spits on his hand and starts rubbing at the stain until Baekhyun pulls his hand away.

"Spit won't do anything. I can help you get the stain out later though, when we're all out of this place."

"Think I might just burn my clothes."

Baekhyun laughs, "I don't blame you. But focus on that. Focus on what you're going to do when you get out of this. It'll make it easier to cope."

Kyungsoo nods. When he gets out of here, he's going to throw out every zombie movie he's ever seen and hug his dogs _so tight_. They're going to have to bite him to make him let go. "Bonfire at my place," he jokes, "we can set things on fire and stuff." Chanyeol giggles and pats him on the ankle.

"I think that's all though. After the door I walked through the hallways out there until I ran into Baekhyun. Oh – there was the loudspeaker!"

"Loudspeaker?"

Kyungsoo nods, "Yeah, I don't know where the actual speakers were, but it went off after... There was a scream, like an actual bone-chilling scream. But it went off after that and it said 'Four has been eliminated. Next phase starting now' or something. And that's when the zombie turned to me and I started running."

No one mentions that Kyungsoo is _3._ They don't have to; he is very aware of his status as next on the chopping block.

They sit in silence for a few moments. Kyungsoo tries to push the thoughts and memories back down. It feels good, just a little, to talk about it all, but he doesn't want these thoughts with him right now. He doesn't have time to think about it all. If he gets all caught up in his head, who knows when he'll come back out. Time is a luxury he doesn't have right now. So Kyungsoo focuses on the two other men sitting next to him and tries to stay out of his own head.

Chanyeol looks around the room. "A loudspeaker? Really? Where would they have put it? Those speakers usually stick out. I mean some of the newer ones go through vents, but you never mentioned seeing any vents. For it to be loud enough to go through all the hallways you talked about there would need to be multiple speakers. That's so strange. This whole thing is strange. Can you describe the voice for me? Maybe it was just a recording?"

It wasn't a recording. Kyungsoo knows that. But he describes the voice anyway, so calm and disconnected from the literal nightmare Kyungsoo was in. And then –

" _Please return Three to their containment center. This area is meant for One and Two only._ "

"That's what it sounded like," Kyungsoo whispers.

"No-not a recording then, huh?" Chanyeol laughs nervously and Kyungsoo feels sick to his stomach. He closes his eyes and tries to breathe. He needs to leave. He needs to run before they try to take him back to his _containment center_. He can't go back to being alone in those hallways again, not when he has human company and comfort. "We're not sendin' you back," Chanyeol says, "Right, Baekhyun?"

Baekhyun nods. "You're not leaving my sight." He playfully nudges Kyungsoo with shoulder to attempt to defuse the tension and it works. For a second, it works and Kyungsoo gives them a shaky smile. He stares down at the bracelet with _3_ in the metal and wishes he could rip it off. "You're safe here."

A metallic thud rings through the hallways. It's dull when it reaches them, but it's there. A metallic, heavy thud that Kyungsoo knows is the first metal door finally giving way to to relentless beatings. He whimpers, sobs once, and then lurches onto his feet.

He grabs the metal pole with trembling hands and stumbles a few steps off the mattress, lungs shrinking in his chest. "I gotta go," he hiccups, "they're – they're gonna come after me and then they're gonna kill me and they're gonna come after you guys. S-so stay as far away from me as you can and just try to stay alive. Oh my God...oh my God, they're coming _again._ I can't do this." He takes off at a run.

Baekhyun calls for him to come back. Baekhyun says that he promised to keep him safe and he will, but Kyungsoo has to come back. But Kyungsoo can't. Before, when the door was still holding up, Baekhyun could keep his promise. Now Kyungsoo knows that all it's going to take is the monsters beating down the second metal door and he _cannot_ just sit on the mattress under the moonlight and listen to death literally knocking at his door.

So he keeps running. However long he rested gave his legs enough of a break that they don't feel like they're going to give out under him.

He runs and runs and runs. Sometimes he thinks he hears Chanyeol and Baekhyun calling after him, but he doesn't stop. He read that minds will start to imagine things to cope with extreme stress, turning a creak into a voice, a shadow into the silhouette of a loved one.

Or it could be a monster mimicking their voices. He has no idea what else is in here.

He keeps running. Grimy stone walls and floors pass him by in blurs, nothing more than colors and darkness in his periphery. The hallways are an endless maze of grey and dust. If it's not red, it doesn't matter. The hallways are endless – that's what a maze means, endless hallways, endless ways to get lost.

And then Kyungsoo comes to a dead end. At the end of the hallway, there's nowhere to turn. It's just a solid wall of stone. He tries to stop running and skids on the floor until he slams into the wall shoulder first. His shoulder throbs, a sharp ache radiating up and down his arm. "Fuck," Kyungsoo hisses. He puts down the pole to rotate his shoulder and try to work out the pain in his muscles. There's no way out of the hallway, he'll have to turn around.

He looks to the right just as he's turning back around and pauses. If he hadn't been looking, he wouldn't have seen it, but there's a thin crack where the corner between the two walls should be. He reaches out and runs a finger down it. It doesn't make any sense; why would a crack be running from ceiling to floor like this?

Kyungsoo doesn't press, doesn't put even the slightest bit of pressure on the opening, but it opens wider. He presses his fingers inside and feels another section of wall, completely separate from the motionless stone at the end of the hallway. It gives way when he presses down on it until his entire arm can fit in the crack. His heart is pounding in his ears as he imagines the monsters growing closer and closer with every second that passes. He needs to turn around or find a way through this opening.

He shoves as hard as he can and falls face first to the floor.

The passage is narrow, barely wide enough for Kyungsoo to sidestep through, but it's enough. Kyungsoo pushes himself to stand and turns around to grab the pipe; he can't lose the pipe. He freezes, heart in his throat as he tries to swallow down the fear paralyzing his body.

The human-spider is there at the end of the hall, maybe a little less than three yards away. He watches as it tilts its head to the side. It doesn't have a face, but where its face would be starts to split in half to give way to a mouth with hundreds, thousands, maybe _millions_ of teeth and a tongue that darts out to taste the air.

Kyungsoo begs his body to move, but he's paralyzed by fear, barely able to do much more than twitch. "Oh my God," he whispers. And then he regrets it because the thing's head snaps toward him and it starts sprinting down the hall. "Oh my God. Oh _fuck_!"

He loses all sense of reason and logic. He could grab the pipe, he knows the pipe is there, but his brain is screaming at him to flee. The second his muscles listen to him he's up and shoving himself into the narrow passageway. The pipe is left on the ground, unused and forgotten.

The passage is so narrow, Kyungsoo's clothes catch on the rough rocky walls and each second he takes to free himself costs him valuable time. He's not even a quarter of the way through the human-spider appears at the opening. He can hear it _hissing_ at him, can see the dim light reflecting off the drool that puddles on the ground underneath it.

"Go away," Kyungsoo begs, "Leave me alone!" It doesn't, but it doesn't follow him into the passageway either. For a moment, he thinks he's safe.

And then it starts forcing itself in. It can't turn like Kyungsoo can, can't make itself thinner. But it doesn't seem to care. It forces itself through the narrow opening with a single-minded desire to rip Kyungsoo open. He gags at the thought of himself cracked open, sightless eyes and fingers curling in from rigor mortis.

He retches when the human-spider's front arms snap off. It forces itself through the opening and it's just too wide to fit, but it doesn't care. Its front arms snap off from the pressure and the friction; blood pours down from the stumps where they used to be, and the spider just keeps coming. It pushes itself forward with the next pair of arms – those are cut off too. Then the first pair of legs, and the next.

Kyungsoo doesn't know why he didn't take that moment to run. He could've. There was no way the spider was going to catch him. Instead, Kyungsoo presses his forehead against the wall and dissolves into sobs at the sight of this creature so determined to kill him that it would kill itself in the process.

It's too dark in the corridor to see anything more than the steadily growing puddle of blood underneath the human-spider, but he sees the moment it dies. Even with all of its limbs pulled off, it was still wiggling toward him with all the strength it had.

It screams when it dies. The thing is less than a foot away from him and hears its pitiful little scream of anger – maybe despair or pain. And then it's dead.

Kyungsoo _shatters_.

The sobs make his throat feel like it's being ripped to shreds; he can't breathe through the tears. He can't stop the tears either. They keep coming, wave after wave of panic. He just watched something _die_. He watched it bleed out right in front of him. If he looks back to the entrance, he can see it's last pair of legs creating their own puddle of red.

"Kyungsoo!" The voice is dull but close. He tries to call back to the voice but his voice won’t cooperate.

He doesn't even care if it's Baekhyun or Chanyeol or another monster that can mimic voices coming to kill him. It's all too much now. He can't deal with any of this anymore. He wants to go _home_. He's so tired.

"Kyungsoo, there you are! I've been looking everywhere for you," Baekhyun appears at the entrance, a soft smile on his face and arms held out. "Come here, let me make sure you're okay."

Kyungsoo shakes his head. He can't go back that way, not with the human-spider and all its legs in the way. "The blood – I can't."

Baekhyun nods and hums, looking so unconcerned by the blood soaking into the bottoms of his jeans. "I can't do anything about the blood, but I can pull the body parts out for you. Sound good?" Kyungsoo nods, so tired that he can't find it in him to question why Baekhyun is so unconcerned. He grabs the dismembered limbs of the human-spider and throws them to the side like he's just clearing out clutter from his garage.

Baekhyun pulls the human-spider’s body and it makes a slick wet sound as it slides across the floor. Kyungsoo gags. “Alright, all clear. C’mere.” Kyungsoo still hesitates. Even with the thing’s body gone, the _blood_ is still there. It’ll soak into his shoes and socks and up the hems of his jeans. “Take a big step,” Baekhyun says, “I’ll try to catch you before you hit the blood.”

Kyungsoo nods. He tries, he does. This thing had bled out though; there’s a lake of blood between him and Baekhyun. Kyungsoo watches as his foot falls into the blood, stomach rolling. He can already feel it.

And then it’s gone. A hand grabs him by the upper arm and yanks him out of the passageway. Kyungsoo goes stumbling into Baekhyun’s chest. He blinks down at his foot and he – he _knows_ he stepped in blood, but his shoes are perfectly clean.

“You okay, Soo?”

“Yeah…yeah. I guess. I’m not – the spider.” The words come out disjointed, syllables stumbling over his tongue and out of his mouth before he can reel them back in. But Baekhyun just hums and and Kyungsoo relaxes into the hand rubbing circles between his shoulder blades.

“I tried calling you back, you know? Listen to me next time. What if I hadn’t found you? You scared the hell out of Chanyeol and I.” Kyungsoo mumbles some sort of apology. He’s too focused on the corpse lying barely a few feet away to actually think about what’s coming out of his mouth. It’s brighter in the hallway and he can see _everything._ The stumps where its limbs used to be, the way its mouth is stuck open because it’s jaw muscles are already locking up. He doesn’t even know if it has jaw muscles. The anatomy of it is so fucked up.

There’s nothing else but the dead body. It fills his vision, his mind, until there’s nothing else left.

Baekhyun tips his chin up, forces his eyes away. He keeps one hand blocking Kyungsoo’s line of sight and uses the other to wipe at his cheeks. Kyungsoo doesn’t know when he started crying. “Don’t cry. And don’t apologize. You were scared and you tried to put distance between yourself and danger. Those are good survival instincts. And that thing,” Baekhyun gestures back to the corpse, “only one of you were coming out of that alive. And you’re alive and you’re okay. Understand?” Kyungsoo nods. “Repeat it back to me; you’re alive and you’re okay.”

“I’m alive and I’m okay.”

“Perfect,” Kyungsoo can hear the smile in Baekhyun’s voice.

They stand there like that for forever, Kyungsoo resting nearly all his weight on Baekhyun and Baekhyun attempting to rub the tension out of his shoulders. He’s not sure how well it’s working, but he feels better. Mostly because Baekhyun refuses to let his gaze drift back down the corpse he knows is there.

Finally, Kyungsoo starts to pull away. “They’re going to start coming for me. The monsters. I already wasted so much time just standing here. I-I gotta go.” All the calm Baekhyun had so painstakingly created drains away as the sound of footsteps thunders down the hallway. Baekhyun doesn’t let him go. “I gotta go! Let me go, Baekhyun!”

“You’re fine. I promised I’d get you out of here, right? Yes. So that’s what I’m going to do. You’re not leaving my sight without my explicit permission. Chanyeol shoved more shit into the barricade, you’ll be fine.”

“They broke through a metal door! This – this fucking thing came out of _nowhere_ and tried to kill me! Your barricade didn’t do anything to stop it!”

Something dangerous flashes in Baekhyun’s eyes. It’s _not right_. Kyungsoo’s heart skips a frenzied beat as he realizes something’s not right. It doesn’t disappear this time. That strange, surreal glint stays in Baekhyun’s eyes even as he reaches to grab Kyungsoo by the chin. His mouth opens, splitting wider than should be humanly possible, and Kyungsoo thinks he might be seeing Hell in Baekhyun’s eyes.

And then Chanyeol skids to a stop at the end of the hallway and starts sprinting towards them. “They almost knocked down the second door! Kyungsoo was right, there are so many fucking things chasing after him. I could hear them while I was putting more stuff in front of the door to block it and you wouldn’t _believe_ how much shit is out there.” Chanyeol slows to a stop next to them and flinches backwards as he takes in the human-spider. “Good fucking God, what the _fuck_ is that? Did you kill it, Kyungsoo?”

Kyungsoo shakes his head. It died because he was lucky enough to squeeze himself into a spot too narrow for it to fit into. Kyungsoo pulls his chin out Baekhyun’s grasp, putting distance between them until Baekhyun’s eyes flicker back to normal. If he didn’t know better, he’d call it a trick of the light.

A sound like a gunshot echoes through the hallways. It sounds like a gunshot to Kyungsoo, at least, a gunshot right between his eyes. Metal breaking under pressure and slamming into stone and wood and whatever else Baekhyun and Chanyeol barricaded the door with. He _told_ Baekhyun the monsters would break through. He’s wasted so much time standing here, letting Baekhyun comfort him like the nightmare was over and he could relax. Stupid, that’s what he was.

Baekhyun grabs him by the arm and doesn’t let go. He shoves the pole in Kyungsoo’s free hand. Kyungsoo doesn’t remember him ever bending down to grab it, but there are likely a million and one things he hasn’t noticed. “I told you to barricade the fucking door, Chanyeol!”

“I did,” Chanyeol yelps, hands in front of him in surrender. “There wasn’t much left to barricade the door; you’d already done most of it by the time I got to it. There are just too many of them for the door to hold off, you know. Not – shit, that sounds really awful for you, Kyungsoo, I’m sorry.”

“Just go, both of you.” Baekhyun snarls and it doesn’t sound completely human. Kyungsoo can’t be sure if he isn’t just projecting the memory of the zombie onto him though. “Chanyeol, keep Kyungsoo safe. The monsters won’t touch you but they’ll literally kill themselves to get to him. I’ll head them off and buy you two a little time. That little corridor will slow down anything that wants to get to you.”

Kyungsoo finds himself in the passageway again before he can blink, Baekhyun shoving him further down. In the time it takes him to realize Baekhyun is leaving him and Chanyeol to go face a _horde,_ Baekhyun is already gone. “Baekhyun,” he yells regardless, “come back!”

And Baekhyun does. He reappears at the entrance with a frown. “What?”

“You – I can’t – what are you… Please don’t go.” It sounds pathetic, even to Kyungsoo, but Baekhyun softens. “You’re gonna get yourself killed. Don’t go. There’s enough room for three people if we’re careful, you don’t have to go.” He can’t have someone die for him. Even if he lives to see sunrise, he doesn’t think he’ll last long with Baekhyun’s death on his conscience.

Baekhyun smiles, gentle and warm, as he waves for Kyungsoo to scoot back down the passageway. When Kyungsoo’s close enough, Baekhyun tugs playfully at some of the strands of hair that have fallen into Kyungsoo’s eyes. “I’ll be fine,” he murmurs, “you’re the one in danger, remember? I promised I’d get you home and that’s what I’m doing. I’ll find you when it’s safe. If things get really bad, call for me. I’ll come find you. You’re better than I ever imagined, I’ll never let you go.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t know what to make of that. All he knows is that Baekhyun is leaving again and Chanyeol is squeezing alongside him into the corridor. Kyungsoo moves; he has to if he wants to make any room for Chanyeol.

His heart is heavy. He just knows Baekhyun’s going to get himself killed and it’ll all be his fault. That weighs him down more than the fear or the exhaustion. But he keeps going because if Baekhyun’s going to die for him, it’s the least that he can do in return.

“Are you guys a thing,” Chanyeol asks after a long while of awkwardly shuffling along the corridor. “Because you guys seem like a thing.”

Kyungsoo shakes his head. “Never met him before today.”

“Huh, that’s kinda weird. When he went out into the hallways, he said he was going to go see if there was anyone else out there. And then he came back with you and he seemed so happy to have found you. I thought you guys already knew each other.”

Baekhyun is weird, that’s a fact; he is very strange in a way Kyungsoo can’t describe. So Kyungsoo just shrugs because he doesn’t know what else to do.

“Are you single then?”

“Are you hitting on me?”

Chanyeol chokes and Kyungsoo can see him turning red in even in the dark. Kyungsoo can’t bring himself to feel any sort of joy at the sight though. He was nearly killed and Baekhyun is about to die; joy is hard to come by right now. “N-no! I’m not hitting on you! I mean you are very pretty, but I have a boyfriend.

“We actually got into a fight tonight. It’s why I was walking around at night. Probably how whoever stuck us in here grabbed me. You know, I’ve been kind disconnected from this whole thing because I’m One so I’m gonna be the last to go if things go to shit tonight. But then I see you and you – you’re fucking shell-shocked, Kyungsoo. Like I don’t know if you know, but you’re shaking literally all the time unless Baekhyun is comforting you. Which is totally justified! But I don’t know how you’re functioning.”

“I’m not,” Kyungsoo whispers. “I wanna cry or throw up or maybe both, but I can’t. I think I will if – when – if… Just, when this all comes to an end for me, I think I’m going to fucking collapse. But I just keep thinking about surviving and going home and never having to see a fucking _zombie_ again.” His voice breaks and he takes a deep, shuddering breath.

“I just keep thinking about what my boyfriend will think if I never come home. The last thing he said to me was ‘Leave me the fuck alone.’ What if that’s the last thing I ever hear from him? I saw the thing that tried to kill you, that weird spidery human fucked up abomination. I just – God, there’s a really good chance we’re going to die tonight, isn’t there?”

Kyungsoo nods. He can’t lie to Chanyeol, not when the man is already halfway to sobbing and grabbing his wrist so tight it aches. There’s a very, very good chance they’re going to die tonight. Baekhyun mentioned sunrise and so that’s what Kyungsoo has in his mind as the goal he has to reach to go home, but no one really knows. They could be here until they die, no end or savior in sight.

They lapse into silence for the rest of the corridor. It’s good. Kyungsoo is pretty sure Chanyeol will break down and they can’t have that, not right now.

The corridor eventually gives way to a room. Kyungsoo stumbles out into it and freezes as he takes it all in, paralyzed by awe. It’s stone, like most of the hallways here, but it’s lit by torches. The floor is made stone bricks, each one laid perfectly next to the other in concentric circles. At the very center is a single beam of moonlight. He walks over and looks up and gasps. The moon is directly overhead, covering the skylight perfectly. It’s beautiful. The room is utterly gorgeous.

“What the fuck,” Chanyeol gasps, “Are you seeing this? It’s like, like. I can’t even describe it.” Kyungsoo looks over, tearing himself away from the moon. Chanyeol isn’t looking up, he’s looking _around_.

The walls are covered in carvings, which makes sense for a second. Then Kyungsoo sees the carvings are actually just one large, interconnected picture. The lines make no sense when he tries to understand any one part of it by itself. They cross and weave around each other in indecipherable patterns

He doesn’t know how he knows it, but he walks past Chanyeol to the section of the wall just to the right of entrance to passageway. He traces the first line that catches his eye with a finger and feels himself falling.

Chaos from above, chaos from below. Death and destruction reigning supreme until there is barely any life left on the planet. The people look for the culprit and find one God sitting among the ruins at every turn. The same God over and over. The God refuses any of their offerings, any of the sacrifices or pleads for mercy. The God lives for death and destruction; it’s the only thing that brings it any joy. Finally, the God asks for a body in return for peace. The people lunge at the chance to live without fear and give the God six bodies instead, set in an order the God decides on the designated night each year. At first, it is a ritual sacrifice, then the God gives the people creatures to kill the sacrifices with. The people do what the God asks each and every year and the God gives them the peace they begged for.

Kyungsoo’s fingers come away sticky and red and he realizes he is standing to the left of the passageway. He doesn’t know how he got there. He turns and Chanyeol is staring at him with something like fear in his eyes. Kyungsoo doesn’t understand. He didn’t do anything, he just touched the wall. And then he realizes his throat feels hoarse and he wonders if the flashes of lightning and fire raining from the sky, of blood and masses cheering for another year of peace, found a way out of his mouth.

“Jesus Christ,” Chanyeol whispers, “we’re going to die here. We’re sacrifices.” Kyungsoo nods. He had the feeling that was the case a long time. But now he knows there was _6_ somewhere in the white hallways too. There are six carvings of people on the wall too, three of them are dripping blood onto the floor and he doesn’t need to guess which numbers they’re meant to correspond to.

 _6, 5, 4,_ and _3._ He’s next, set up to die by a God that craves death like they need it to live.

Hopeless, it’s all hopeless. They’re going to die and there’s nothing they can do to stop it. Kyungsoo wants to lie down on the floor and wait for the end to come because there is nothing he can do now but die.

Baekhyun’s voice echoes loud in his ears. Baekhyun promised to get him out. Baekhyun promised him the sunrise.

“We have to keep going.” Kyungsoo tightens his grip on the pole and takes a deep breath. He lets it out slowly and forces away the knowledge that they’re all going to die. “If that God wants to see us dead, that God is going to have come down here and kill us. You have to go make up with your boyfriend and we have to find Baekhyun and go home. Those people had no right to sentence us to death because of a deal they made! Who gives a fuck about saving the world? The world got itself into this mess, it can get itself out! Fuck the world, Chanyeol! We’re going home!” He doesn’t know where the rush of energy comes from, but it’s so welcome. Chanyeol seems to feed off of it too, the numb, hopeless expression on his face morphing into a smile.

“We’re going home!” Chanyeol grins so wide Kyungsoo’s cheeks hurt. For a moment, they have real, palpable hope.

A howl sounds from somewhere too close and too far away. Kyungsoo swears because Baekhyun said it’d only be harder for the monsters to catch up to them, not impossible. He tries not to think about the fact that a monster catching up to them means it got through Baekhyun.

A howl comes again, closer this time. The entrance in the wall starts to widen; Kyungsoo can see all the way down it, can see the creature at the other end forcing the walls to split with its size and strength. “It’s a fucking werewolf,” he says in awe. “There’s a real werewolf right there.”

Kyungsoo nearly falls flat on his face as Chanyeol grabs him by the arm and hauls him across the room. A door appearing where there was flat wall. “Mhm, that is a werewolf,” Chanyeol says, voice turning hysterical, “and I would very much like us to not be anywhere near where that wolf is.”

The hallway beyond the door is straight and they run as fast they can, two legs working overtime to outrun a creature with four. Kyungsoo looks back once at the sound of stone crunching against stone and sees the door they had run through mere seconds ago revolving shut and thudding into place. There’s something about it that reminds him of finding the metal pole on the ground back in the white hallways, but he doesn’t know what it is. He looks forward again when Chanyeol yelps and tries to skid to a stop.

It’s too late by then. He’s tumbling over a ledge he hadn’t seen. Chanyeol hits the ground first. He had twisted sometime during the fall to land on his back and Kyungsoo can hear the wind get knocked out of him. Kyungsoo doesn’t fall that way. He aims to land on hands and knees; he lands feet first instead.

He hears his ankle snap before he feels the pain.

But when he feels the pain, he _feels it._ White hot fire rushing up his leg in waves that knock the wind out of his lungs. He gasps for air, brain sputtering as it tries to comprehend what just happened. He remembers falling, remembers landing on his feet, knows what can happen when that much weight and pressure hits his tarsals that fast, but it takes a few minutes to put all the dots together and _understand_. The initial pain fades and then he’s left with a numb sort of tingling that makes him sick to his stomach.

He’s never broken a bone before. Turns out, he really doesn’t like it. “Chanyeol, I think I broke my ankle.” Chanyeol freezes where he’d been pushing himself to sit up. He lunges forward and his hand lands on the pole. It slides out from under him and he just barely saves himself from smashing his face on the stone floor.

Kyungsoo looks at the metal pole in wonder. He had been holding that in his hand. The way he fell, it should’ve hit the ground and slid up to hit him in the face. But it’s by Chanyeol, a good foot away.

“Lemme see,” Chanyeol says as he scurries across the floor. He takes Kyungsoo’s ankle in gentle hands; it still makes pain like pins and needles run up his leg. “I’m in med school, actually. Not a doctor yet, or anything, but I can tell a sprain from a break.” He asks about pain or numbness, asks to see Kyungsoo’s other ankle and compares them. “Did you hear anything when you hit the ground?”

“A snap? Maybe like a crack or something between those too?”

Chanyeol blows out a breath and then hauls Kyungsoo up to his feet with hands under his arms. “Take a step with your bad foot.” Kyungsoo looks at him and he’s not sure if he trusts this stranger to catch him if his leg gives out. He takes a step anyway though. It’s just him and Chanyeol here, so either he takes Chanyeol’s help or suffers alone. The second Kyungsoo puts weight on his bad ankle, he falls over.

“Okay, yeah,” Chanyeol laughs, voice strained as he catches Kyungsoo from hitting the floor face first, “it’s broken. And I’m gonna guess you broke all three tarsals because your ankle looks fucked. How much do you weigh? One-forty, one-fifty?” Kyungsoo shrugs, mind a million miles away from what he weighs.

His leg is broken. It may just be his ankle, but Kyungsoo is reminded of all the nature shows where animals abandon pack and children because of a broken limb. If Chanyeol left him – he doesn’t know what he would do because thinking about it makes his chest tighten up. But Chanyeol doesn’t seem like he’s going to leave him. Chanyeol bends down, “Hop on. Either I carry you or we’re stuck here because I’m not leavin’ you behind.”

Kyungsoo doesn’t think twice. Chanyeol stumbles under the added weight for a moment, then he adjusts and they’re hurrying off down this new set of hallways. Kyungsoo hears the werewolf howl and it’s muffled, but it’s not nearly as muffled as he’d like it to be.

The next set of hallways are short too. They take turns picking which way to go and it’s so ridiculous it’s almost funny – Chanyeol hobbling along with Kyungsoo on his back, navigating together. If it was any other situation, Kyungsoo thinks it would be funny. There’s nothing funny about the way his foot has gone numb or the fact that they’re both pretending that the howling isn’t muffled anymore.

“Another room,” Chanyeol sighs as they take a right. It’s a boiler room, complete with those big industrial fans he used to see in movies on the ceiling. The blades circulate and create a pattern of light and dark as they cut off the moonlight. Freedom is right there, just out of their grasp. But they can see the moon again, and that’s something. “You see a way out of here, Kyungsoo?”

“No.” He can’t see anything that’s not under those few faint rays of moonlight. The corners of the room are pitch black. “But at least the howling stopped, right?” Chanyeol mumbles something in agreement and leans down to set Kyungsoo back down.

Something twice Chanyeol’s size melts out of the shadows in front of them just as Kyungsoo is settled. Wolves aren’t supposed to be that big. Time stands still.

Kyungsoo watches Chanyeol’s hands shake. He can’t tell in the moonlight, not really, but for a second he thinks Chanyeol is going to faint and leave him to die. The wolf stalks forward, growling low in its chest and puffing out large snorts of air. It steps into the light and its mouth is hanging open, drool pooling out of its jowls and onto the floor. Black fur looks inky in the moonlight and it reminds Kyungsoo of a beast from his worst nightmares, those dreams he only remembers in flashes of sensation and unmitigated fear. It never looks at Chanyeol – it doesn’t even seem to notice that he exists. But it notices Kyungsoo.

Kyungsoo starts crawling backwards, pushing himself away even as the werewolf stalks ever closer. His pulse is roaring in his ears, just rushes of terror and the gut feeling that this is where he’s going to die.

Chanyeol steps in front of him, puts his body between Kyungsoo and the beast. “Hand me the pole,” he whispers, one shaking hand extended back. Kyungsoo tries to speak and his voice squeaks out of his throat in indecipherable rushes of air. He hands Chanyeol the pole without a word. It’s not until it’s out of his hands that he realizes he gave Chanyeol his only means of self-defense. “On the count of three, I want you to get behind the spool of cables to the left of us as fast you can. And then shut the fuck up. Don’t make _any noise at all._ I have a plan, but you _have_ to get out of the way.”

“Okay.” Kyungsoo looks up from the werewolf and meets Chanyeol’s eyes. They share a nervous smile and there’s something unquestionably sad to Chanyeol’s. Pity? Kyungsoo would pity Chanyeol if he was _3_ too.

“One…two… _three!”_

Chanyeol rushes forward. Kyungsoo scrabbles toward the spool of cables and shoves himself behind them. He’s so focused he doesn’t even think to look for Chanyeol. The werewolf is snarling, howling and lunging out at random. The pole is on the ground, one end covered in blood and gore and something white that Kyungsoo doesn’t want to think about. Blood pools under the werewolf’s head, dripping down from where his eyes used to be.

Chanyeol blinded the wolf. Its head tosses from side to side as it tries to find Kyungsoo again but Chanyeol is knocking over everything in his path; it’s too loud for Kyungsoo to even think.

“Over here,” Chanyeol shouts from the other side of the room, and the werewolf turns toward the sound. Whatever it had been using to track Kyungsoo through the hallways is failing it and Kyungsoo’s heart is thundering in his chest. “Don’t know where anything is now, do you?  Teaches you to fuckin’ chase people down and kill them.” Chanyeol starts sprinting to the complete opposite corner of the room, throwing things and being as loud as humanly possible.

Everything that happens next is at once a blur and in slow motion.

The werewolf chases after Chanyeol, following the sound. Chanyeol waves for Kyungsoo to wedge himself underneath a giant metal table so low to the ground he’s not sure he’ll be able to get back out. But Kyungsoo listens because Chanyeol is a fucking doctor and possibly the smartest person he’s ever met. Kyungsoo is almost to the table when he slams his bad ankle against a stray piece of metal. The werewolf turns around from chasing Chanyeol at the sound, but Chanyeol chucks a rock at its head and it would’ve turned back.

Kyungsoo thinks it would’ve turned back, but he screams in pain, “ _Fuck!_ ” The werewolf turns back around and lunges for him, hyper-attuned to the sound of Kyungsoo’s voice. Chanyeol is already swearing and chasing after the werewolf, but it’s too late. Kyungsoo can’t move out of the way with his ankle and there’s no way Chanyeol can catch up to the creature in time.

Kyungsoo never saw the chain. He never saw the metal pipes suspended in the air on a metal platform attached to the chain. He’d never thought to look up after he saw the moon. Chanyeol must’ve though.

There’s the sound of a chain rattling and metal sliding across metal. He hears the air whistling as it’s split by falling objects. He hears the yelp and the thud and squish when the pipes find their target. He opens his eyes to the werewolf inches from him, jaw still hanging open and front paws extended in a lunge. One of the pipes had gone straight through its head and stuck to the ground, freezing the beast in place. Kyungsoo gasps in relief even as he’s scrambling to get away, to put some distance between himself and the dead body. There’s blood spilling out from around the pipe in its head, not so much as the human-spider though.

“Oh my god, Chanyeol, you did it! How did you even think to do that?” Joy spirals up through his chest as he realizes two things have tried to kill him and failed. He hadn’t really done much to save himself, but he’s _alive_ and that’s what matters. “Chanyeol,” he calls, “you’re a fucking genius!”

There’s no response. Kyungsoo looks up, calling Chanyeol’s name. And then he finally throws up, vomiting whatever could be in his stomach. So much blood, so much carnage and gore and death, but this is too much for him. He was supposed to be next. They saw the carvings and the story; they knew Kyungsoo was supposed to go next. Kyungsoo retches even when his stomach is completely empty, unable to process what’s happening in front of him.

“Kyungsoo,” Chanyeol whispers. And it’s so breathy, like he can’t get enough air to actually speak. Kyungsoo can’t respond covering his mouth with his hands as he tries not to cry. The joy leaves him in a rush, guilt and shame and realization taking its place. “You okay?”

Kyungsoo laughs once and then it dissolves into sobs. Chanyeol is impaled, a pole wider than Kyungsoo’s fist stuck through his stomach, and he asks if Kyungsoo is okay. Kyungsoo forces himself across the floor, hopping on his good foot until he can collapse on the floor next to Chanyeol. His hands hover over the pole, unsure if he should pull it out. Chanyeol tells him not to. “It’s the only thing holding the blood in,” he says even as he refuses to look down and see what happened.

“Why didn’t you get out of the way? Y-you had it all planned out? I thought…”

“I did have it all planned out. I thought that maybe I could get it into a position where I could lasso the chain with something and stay out of the way, but I was pretty sure I couldn’t. You just…you were – _are_ so scared, Kyungsoo, but you never gave up. I gave up when I saw the carvings. I knew that I just didn’t have the will to keep going, but you did. I wanted to make sure you had a chance, you know? So, I let this happen.” Chanyeol smiles and there are flecks of blood staining his teeth. “But, you know, if you wouldn’t mind sending an ambulance for me after you get out, I’d be pretty grateful.”

Kyungsoo buries his face in his knees and cries. He doesn’t know what else to do besides cry. Chanyeol is laughing like he’s not going to die from the pole in his stomach and Kyungsoo doesn’t know what to do. “I’m so sorry. I’m so so _so_ sorry. This is all my fault. I should-shouldn’t have broken my ankle because then I could’ve ran and helped instead of just fucking _sat here_ and let you die. I should be the one dying. I was supposed to be next.”

“Shut the fuck up, Kyungsoo. I did what I did with a sound mind and body. It was my choice and I made it. Neither of us should be dying, but I realized I wasn’t going to be able to make it on my own if anything happened to you and Baekhyun, so I picked myself instead of you.” Chanyeol pauses and stares up at the moon, eyes filling with tears. Kyungsoo takes Chanyeol’s hand in his own and presses it against his cheek in some attempt to comfort him.

Chanyeol takes a few deep breaths, blinking the tears away. And then a sob rocks his body, “P-promise me something? Find my boyfriend and tell him I was going to come home. I wasn’t going to spend the night at my sister’s and come back in the morning for my stuff like I said I was. I was almost home when they grabbed me. I still love him and I didn’t wanna leave. Please make sure he knows that. Uh – his name is K-Kris Wu. You can find him in the phonebook because he has a fucking home phone like a dinosaur. If he doesn’t believe that I told you, that’s okay, just as long as someone tells him that.” A few moments pass Chanyeol collects himself and then he grins. Kyungsoo tries to ignore that his teeth are stained red. “Now get the fuck out of here. If I’m gonna d-die for you, then you literally have to live. Law of reciprocity and shit.”

“Maybe you won’t die,” Kyungsoo mumbles, “You’re not bleeding.” He’s just not ready to leave Chanyeol.

“Infection, Kyungsoo. That or I’ll have to move eventually and that’ll shift the pole. Med school remember?” Kyungsoo nods. He can’t look away from the pole and he hates it. He _hates_ it. He hates the people that put them in here and the fucking God that started all this in the first place.

“Hop on your good foot as much as you can. Take the metal pipe and use that to stabilize your sides, kind of like rowing a kayak or skiing. If you get tired, rest your ankle on the pole to keep it immobile and scoot on the floor. Now go, I’m serious. I noticed a door over on the right when I was running, and it should get you out of here.”

Kyungsoo stands then, nodding and promising Chanyeol that he’ll come back for him if he gets out. “Don’t move. Try to keep the pole from moving so you don’t move and stuff. I’ll…I’ll tell the doctors to bring like the heavy duty antibiotics and stuff.”

Chanyeol smiles and it’s so sad. Kyungsoo recognizes it from before and doesn’t understand why he thought it was pity. That’s the smile of someone who has resigned themselves to death.

Kyungsoo finds that there is a door along the right wall. “Thank you, Chanyeol.” Chanyeol nods and lets out a breath, keeping the pole steady as he lies down on the dirty stone floor and stares up at the sky just out of his reach.

They were so close to freedom so many times and now Chanyeol is going to have to stare at the unattainable as he dies. That’s not fucking fair. None of this has been fair, not for _6, 5,_ or _4_ , but Chanyeol, _1_ , has a name and a face and is a person to Kyungsoo and that makes it sting that much more.

“Hey,” Chanyeol calls just as Kyungsoo is slipping through the door, “it’s almost sunrise.”

The hallway is long, and it feels like it takes ages to get to the end without the use of one of his legs. He’s panting by the time he reaches the end and follows the path around the corner. For a moment, he considers sitting down and scooting across the floor, just to give his leg some semblance of a break. But his mind conjures up images of a zombie stumbling down the hallway after him, fast enough because it can use both of its legs, towering over him as he stares up at it in horror from the floor.

Exhausted, Kyungsoo takes a deep breath and starts hopping again.

The path eventually takes him back to the first metal door. What is left of the metal door. It's a twisted, warped, destroyed ruin of what it used to be, lying on the floor a foot away. There are bloody hand prints covering all of one side, one large smear that makes Kyungsoo think of a red-soaked mouth pressed against the metal.

Past the door, into the white hallways, is more blood. It’s more blood than Kyungsoo ever imagined seeing, smeared up the ceilings, splattered all the way down the part of the hallway he can see. There are drag marks too, places where he _knows_ someone or something was pulled through the river of blood to its death. Could someone drown in blood? Kyungsoo decides he doesn’t want to know the answer to that. But there’s _so much_. More than could come from one person. Or two. Or three. And there were at least three bodies broken open and thrown around here.

 _6_ , _5,_ and _4_ ’s bracelets sit in a neat little row right at the threshold where the door used to be. They were dragged here, maybe, in the time that Kyungsoo was gone. The monsters got bored trying to break down the door to him. 

It’s sick, but Kyungsoo feels a wave of relief when he doesn’t see _2_. It doesn’t mean Baekhyun is alive, but at least he didn’t die here.

The heatwaves are gone, no shimmering, mirage-like tint to the air just beyond where the door used to be. Kyungsoo hops forward. They still don’t appear to bar his path. It’s almost like they weren’t there at all, blinking in and out existence for that single moment in time. So he continues on, back into the white hallways. He can’t go back, not when he knows the monsters are stalking after him, not when Chanyeol told him to keep going.

Kyungsoo takes a deep breath, committing Chanyeol’s face and the name _Kris Wu_ in his brain to find when he gets out. Because he _will_ get out. Baekhyun died for him, Chanyeol died for him; he refuses to let that be in vain.

The blood is still wet under his foot and he gags whenever he presses one hand against the wall for balance. He should be used to the blood by now; he’s seen more here than most men ever see in their lives. But it isn’t any easier. The feeling of it wet and sticky under his palm still makes his stomach roll and his jaw lock up like it always does in that split second before he vomits. Nothing comes up though. He doesn’t think anything will be able to compare the image of Chanyeol with a pole through his stomach.

Kyungsoo’s foot slips out from underneath him, hitting an especially slick patch and losing traction. The metal pole goes flying and the metallic ringing sound it makes when it hits the wall bounces off the walls. Kyungsoo swears and scrabbles to push himself back to standing. The smell of blood curls in his nose and makes his eyes water. His clothes feel like they’re soaked through and he has to push that thought far, far away. It’s hard enough to push away the guilt as is, he doesn’t need anything else.

He ends up crawling out of the blood, hot tears dripping down his cheeks because he can’t push away the knowledge that he’s essentially wading in another human’s blood. There are some things he just can’t ignore.

The blood fades away after he turns the corner and he’s greeted by simple, clean white wall. The smell of blood follows him, but he can’t see it anymore unless he looks down – and it’s enough, it _has_ to be enough. He looks back once and sees his own footprints following behind him, red shining under the bright lights. Kyungsoo closes his eyes to shut out the image and turns forward again.

He tries to remember the way back to the beginning. Whoever left him here had to have some way in an out and he’s willing to bet it’s somewhere close to where he woke up. But he doesn’t remember where he woke up. All he remembers is running, no period of waking up on the floor and and finding his bearings. It was all just running and walls and floors passing him by.

Kyungsoo tries though. Tries to pull up memories of which turns he’d taken. It’s nearly impossible when every hallway is identical, but he tries. He could be running in circles, he could be going the right way, he has no idea. He just keeps going.

He forgets to be careful. He spends so much time in white hallways that all look the same that he forgets the immediate danger, forgets to look out for threats. And that’s what gets people killed.

It nearly gets him killed.

Kyungsoo turns a corner and his mouth is opening in a scream before his mind processes the four disheveled, bloody, half-rotted creatures reaching for him. He didn’t think there would still be monsters in these hallways. They should all be chasing after him, right? They shouldn’t be lying in wait. And yet these zombies are here, reaching for him with hands missing fingers and mouths dripping blood. Kyungsoo throws himself backwards, as far out of their range as he can without losing his balance.

One zombie quickens its pace and the rest follow suit. Sunken, sightless eyes track his movements, mouths opening and closing like sharks. “Shit,” he hisses, “shit fuck shit! _Goddammit!”_ His voice comes out more shrill than it’s ever been and he doesn’t even care.

His thoughts come out frantic and disconnected, just bits and pieces of information and ideas all wrapped around the fact that he needs to _survive_. There’s no Baekhyun or Chanyeol here to save him, no corridor to hide himself in. It’s just him and the zombies and – _the pole_. He has a flash of Chanyeol impaled through the stomach and stuck in place. Nausea rolls through him like a shockwave but his body is already moving.

The zombies chase him in a near perfect line, pushing and shoving at each other to reach him first. He lifts the pole and forgets all hopes for balance, holding the metal straight out in front of him and letting himself fall forward. He hears the squish as the pole cuts through the emaciated frame of the first zombie, hears each subsequent crack as the metal crushes four spines in sequence. They’re like gunshots ringing in his ears, the thud as they all hit the floor feels like it echoes for _miles_.

But the zombies don’t get back up. They can’t. Each one reaches for him, but none of them can figure out how to work with the pole spearing them all together. Kyungsoo stares blankly at the zombies, kicking numbly when one reaches for his foot.

He waits for the rush of hopelessness at the realization he’s lost his best weapon. He feels a little powerful instead, like a survivor. So what if he doesn’t have a weapon? He’s alive, he did not go gently into that good night.

Sunrise is coming and he’s still alive.

Kyungsoo starts the slow process of scooting across the floor, one hand holding his ankle as steady as possible. The zombies are still stuck together when he rounds the corner and he smiles, just a little. Even if they eventually come unstuck or figure out how to get up while stuck together, he slowed them down for a little while.

Three turns pass and Kyungsoo realizes the zombies broke his concentration. He can’t remember what turns he’s already taken or where he had been planning to go. He’s lost, more lost than he had been before. He spins to face forward, away from where he’d been watching in case the zombies came ambling after him. He hopes that he’ll see a blood smear that jogs his memory – and that’s so sick. He feels sick for thinking it. But he’s still trying to survive, he doesn’t have the time or frame of mind to think of morals or trauma.

He sees nothing. Just more pristine, featureless white walls that stretch on and on and _on._

“We cleaned them off. Didn’t want you getting any ideas.” Kyungsoo whirls around and chokes on a scream. A panel on the wall he hadn’t noticed is swinging open. There’s a man standing behind him dressed in a nondescript, indistinguishable black suit. He smiles and he looks so human. He’s so ordinary, so unassuming that Kyungsoo can’t believe that this man identifies with the ‘we’ that is the reason he’s been fighting for his life for _hours_. It’s always the quiet ones, the one who blend into the background and don’t stand out until they’re rushing at you while you walk home from the grocery store.

“It was you. I remember you from the check-out line.”

The man smiles wider and shrugs. “Yes, I was assigned to find Three this year. It was simple bad luck that got you picked, by the way. We threw a dart at a map of the world and the dart for Three landed on that part of the world. Each subsequent dart we threw at each subsequent map narrowed down the exact location to that grocery store. I rolled a few dice, flipped a coin, and you were the one who was chosen. It is truly nothing personal. I’ve heard that makes it easier, you know, to know that you died simply because of random chance.”

Anger roars to life in Kyungsoo’s gut and he screams, tugging his shoe off his good foot and throwing at the man as hard as he can. It slams into the man’s face with a satisfying thud and crack. The man yelps and reaches up to cover his nose, blood already dripping down his face and onto the floor. “You little shit! I was supposed to come in and be pleasant, give you a few moments of peace before the end!”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Kyungsoo screams back. His throat aches but he doesn’t care. This person abducted him, stuck a metal bracelet on his arm to designate when he’s supposed to die, and then left him be torn apart. He could fucking die for all Kyungsoo cares. “You think I give a fuck about what you were supposed to do? You left six people here to die! Chanyeol was fucking _impaled_ and you don’t give a fuck! You only care about yourself!”

“I – _we_ care about the good of humanity! You and those five others are sacrifices to grant us mercy from Him. You are a doing a service to all mankind! It is an honor.”

“If it’s such an honor, then why don’t you do it, huh? Why take five random, innocent people and subject them to these fucking awful, gruesome deaths when I’m sure you fuckers pulling the strings would _love_ to take our place?”

The man turns his bloody nose up as though the suggestion of dying is beneath him. “If we all died, who would there be to make sure the sacrifices are complete?” Kyungsoo bites his tongue to stop the scream of pain and as he pulls off and throws his other shoe at the man. It hits him in the eye, indignation and a burning hatred fueling the throw. He smiles as the man begins to scream about rudeness and ungratefulness. “God, I wish the rules said I could kill you myself. I would fucking _love_ to. But One is going to die soon and we need to make sure you and Two are taken care of before then, so I am going to attempt to be polite to you once more. You have to die by your own hand or by one of our many incredible creatures, you see?”

Kyungsoo sees movement behind the man, a shadow just around the corner. He watches as the man shuts his eyes and pinches the bridge of his nose in some stupid self-righteous bullshit and then looks back to the shadow. The four zombies amble around the hallway. They’re silent now. They had been so loud when they were coming for him, but even as their mouths open and close, no sound comes out. Did they wear out their vocal chords?

“I have a pistol with me right now. I would be happy to let you use it and give yourself a painless death. I know He won’t be pleased, but He will be much more upset if He doesn’t get His six bodies.”

The zombies come closer. Kyungsoo’s heart races in his chest. The pole is still running through them, holding them together. He has no way to defend himself; the man will probably hold him down to make sure he doesn’t escape too. But then he notices something strange – the zombies are limping towards the man, their eyes not even darting to Kyungsoo.

 “How does that sound, hm? A painless death? If you apologize for being so rude, I will take the gun to One after Two has been taken care of and let him end his suffering early.”

The zombies come closer. For a moment, he thought it had been a trick of the light or just an issue with the way they were walking, but the zombies are reaching for the man. They’re so close now. Kyungsoo’s heart is racing in a strange, dizzying mix of elation, confusion, and absolute terror.

“Well? Three, I’m talking to you! I have been in charge of gathering sacrifices for ten years, but never have I ever been so excited for a death in the way that I am for yours. You are just so rude! He will enjoy watching you die t-”

Kyungsoo has never heard a scream like that in his lifetime. Maybe the scream from when _4_ died comes close, but that was less human and more victorious. This scream is one of pain, of confusion and alarm and knowing death is coming. Kyungsoo closes his eyes after the second zombie closes its jaws around the other side of the man’s neck. He already saw one set of blood-stained, dirty teeth tear living flesh open, blood welling up and spilling in rivulets an image burned into his mind. He doesn’t want to see anymore.

He keeps his eyes closed as he listens to the crack and crunch and rips of the zombies tearing the man apart. The man screams for a minute maybe. He screams for help, for mercy. Kyungsoo is rooted in place, frozen in place as he tries to remember to keep breathing.

His eyes open when the sound of death and eating ends and a growl rumbles through the air. The zombies are positioned awkwardly and fighting each other to reach the man’s carcass from where they’re stuck on on the pipe. The one closest to him looks up and tilts its head, breathing heavily in his direction. He’s still frozen in fear. All his former bravado and courage has left with the realization that he has no way to defend himself, no way out.

The zombie growls again and the three others turn their heads to look at him, flesh hanging from their mouths and held tightly in their hands. A blank glaze returns to their eyes and they snarl in unison. The one in front starts to move towards him. It begins pulling itself bodily off the pole.

Kyungsoo tries to scream, but the sound gets caught in his throat and all he manages to get out is a choked, terrified whimper. He doesn’t move – he can’t, not with horror paralyzing his muscles and wiping his mind of any thought but the knowledge that he’s about to die. A gnarled hand missing fingers closes around his ankle and he shuts his eyes, too scared to face death when it comes.

And then everything stops. The hand leaves his ankle and all he hears is silence.

“I told you to call for me, Soo. We have to work on your listening skills, don’t we?” Kyungsoo’s eyes flies open and Baekyhun is kneeling in front of him, smiling gently as he reaches for Kyungsoo’s face. Behind him, the walls are splattered in blood and gore and things he can’t put a name to. Distantly, he knows the tattered remains beyond Baekhyun are the zombies and the man. But all Kyungsoo can think about is that he’s _alive_. _Baekhyun’s alive_. Baekhyun is _here_.

A sob wells up in his chest and he doesn’t think of trying to hold it back. Baekhyun coos, and his eyes are not right again. They’re otherworldly, not human. The way he pulls Kyungsoo close and kisses his forehead is human, but there’s nothing mortal in the way he waves his hand and what’s left of the zombies and man go flying down the hall. “You’re alright, Kyungsoo, you don’t need to cry. Nothing can hurt you now. I got rid all of the people behind this stupid sacrifice bullshit; it’s all over.” Kyungsoo cries harder.

Baekhyun doesn’t let him go. He cards his fingers through Kyungsoo’s hair and smooths a hand down his side. Kyungsoo watches as Baekhyun’s fingers wiggle between the space of the metal bracelet declaring Kyungsoo as _3_ and Kyungsoo’s skin. Everything is blurred by tears, but he can still see the metal snap apart, can hear when it breaks and clatters to the floor. He looks to Baekhyun’s wrist; his bracelet is gone too.

Everything makes sense at once.

“Y-you…you’re the God. You found me in the dark hallways and I hit you with the pole – I h-hit you in the head and you were fine. And you didn’t care about the blood and you were so su-re I was gon-gonna live.”

Baekhyun nods. “And I left that pole for you and made it impossible for the monsters to follow you to the first metal door. I had to make sure you got to me in one piece, you know? I opened the door in the carvings room and made sure that the pole always fell away from you when you tripped. I was busy disposing of that idiot with the pistol’s friends when you fell down that ledge though. I only caught the last second of it; I had to move the pole to make sure it didn’t go right through your pretty, little head so your ankle had to take the brunt of the fall. I’ll take care of your ankle back at home though.” Baekhyun’s fingers close around his bad ankle and the numb tingling disappears, replaced by a comforting warmth that spreads down to the tips of his toes and up the rest of his leg.

“Chanyeol figured it out first, did you know that? He figured it out in the room with the carvings. It’s why he knew you would get out of here, that dying for you was worth it. But you’re still so smart. I could hear you questioning me the whole way; you were so suspicious. If you weren’t so preoccupied with survival, you would have figured it out very early on. But it doesn’t matter now, huh? All that matters now is that you get to go home to your little dogs and I’ll take care of you.”

There’s so much not right about that. Baekhyun could’ve stopped this whenever he wanted, could’ve saved _6, 5,_ and _4._ He could’ve saved _Chanyeol_. Kyungsoo is so tired. He sags against Baekhyun and curls his fingers in the fabric of his shirt and _cries_. “I wan-na go home.”

Arms fit under Kyungsoo’s knees and around the small of his back. “Then let’s go home. I promised you the sunrise, Kyungsoo. I’ve been waiting for you for such a long time it would be very unfitting to break that promise, hm? Get you warm and safe. I’d like to get some food in you too, if you’ll stay awake for it.”

Kyungsoo mumbles something in response and Baekhyun laughs. He calls him sweet and tired and apologizes for not taking better care of him tonight. Kyungsoo is still crying, emotion and exhaustion slamming into him as he understands, truly understands, that he’s going home. He’s going to live. He’s going to go home and check the phonebook –

“Chanyeol,” he whispers, tightening his grip on Baekhyun’s shirt, “He’s still alive, right? You – he…” Baekhyun pauses and sighs through his nose. He won’t help Chanyeol. Chanyeol doesn’t matter to him. But he matters to Kyungsoo. Kyungsoo tries to lever himself back out of Baekhyun’s arms. “I gotta go save Chanyeol.”

“You’re not going anywhere. You can’t walk and I’m not letting you out of my sight.”

“Then _help him!_ Please, he saved my life and he’s gonna die and his boyfriend’s not going to know what happened and,” Kyungsoo’s breath comes too fast, vision dimming around the edges. Chanyeol is _dying_ and Baekhyun can save him. How can he not want to do that?

“Shh, you’re okay. I’ll help him. All you had to do was ask.” Baekhyun’s face turns sharper, less human than ever before and Kyungsoo’s throat feels like it’s closing up.

There’s a sound like air being split and Kyungsoo turns his head to see Chanyeol standing not a foot away. His heart jumps in his chest in elation. Chanyeol is here and alive. And then he sees Baekhyun didn’t bring the pole with Chanyeol or close up the wound. There’s a hole in Chanyeol’s stomach and there’s so much _blood_. Baekhyun swears, and everything dims and goes black.

* * *

He wakes to cold water in his face, raining down on him relentlessly. Kyungsoo gasps and kicks out; his arms flail helplessly as he tries to simultaneously wipe at his face and block wherever the water is coming from. He coughs and suddenly he feels like he can’t breathe and everything becomes a blind panic.

"Hey, hey, you're fine," a voice soothes his frayed nerves, hands that aren't his own wiping the water out of his eyes. "Just cleaning you off. The water should warm up in a bit." Kyungsoo's eyes flutter open and his next breath catches in his throat at the sight of Baekhyun smiling down at him. "There you are," he murmurs, "you've been unconscious for almost an hour. Chanyeol was worried you were going into shock. I told him you were just tired. Looks like I was right, huh?"

"Uh." Kyungsoo blinks at Baekhyun, still disoriented from the cold water. His favorite towel is hanging on the hook behind the door. This is his bathroom. He's in his bathtub. Baekhyun is a God and he's in Kyungsoo's bathroom, holding the detachable showerhead. "You – I." Baekhyun nods, lips twitching like he wants to laugh. Flashes of the night come over Kyungsoo like a wave, blood and death and fear turning his blood to ice. He remembers Baekhyun's smile and the God in the carvings. "I'm alive?"

And Baekhyun does laugh then. "Of course, I promised you would be. I don't break promises – not to you, at least." Kyungsoo remembers Chanyeol and startles. Chanyeol was bleeding out right in front of him. There was so much blood pouring out of his stomach and – Kyungsoo just passed out.

He fainted and left Chanyeol to die. Again.

"Chanyeol!" He lunges forward to throw himself out of the bathtub, but Baekhyun catches him with a hand pressed to his chest.

"Chanyeol is fine. Last I saw, he was falling asleep on your couch on the phone with his boyfriend." Baekhyun mumbles to himself as he kneels down next to the tub and fiddles with the hot water knob. "Just relax and let me clean you off. You're covered in blood and fear sweat."

Kyungsoo looks down at himself and immediately looks away. His clothes are _disgusting_ , covered in crusting blood and flesh. Baekhyun hums as he goes about hosing Kyungsoo down with warm water. He's so carefree, so fucking carefree. Kyungsoo feels like he's three seconds from losing his mind under the weight of everything he's seen and suffered tonight, but Baekhyun is perfectly fine.

Baekhyun tips Kyungsoo's head back and works shampoo into his hair. "You weren't meant to cope with things like tonight." he says as he rinses him clean. "You were made to be an elementary school music teacher with two poodles; I would be concerned if tonight _didn't_ bother you. If you were acting like I am now, you wouldn't be you.

"Besides, I've seen more death than you could ever imagine. And I've always enjoyed it. I seem carefree because I _am_ carefree." Kyungsoo jaws drops open, just a bit. Baekhyun snickers and gently closes it. "Wouldn't be very omnipotent if I couldn't read thoughts, hm? I appreciate that you thought I was handsome though, that was very sweet."

Kyungsoo doesn't know what to say to that. Baekhyun can read anything he wants to say before he says it anyway. So he says nothing at all; he just lets Baekhyun clean the blood and grime from his skin. He pulls off his shirt when Baekhyun asks.

He's not afraid of Baekhyun, not like he should be. If Baekhyun wanted to kill him, he'd be dead already. Baekhyun nods and tells him he's right about that.

"There you go," Baekhyun hums, "Just relax. You're perfectly safe." Baekhyun's fingers pause at the mottled blue and purple covering Kyungsoo's shoulder. He has a distant memory of slamming into a wall, but its faint. It becomes even more faint as Baekhyun frowns and warmth seeps into his shoulder, bruises shrinking before his eyes until they disappear altogether. "All better?" Kyungsoo nods and Baekhyun smiles. He ruffles Kyungsoo's hair and continues on cleaning.

Baekhyun starts singing a minute later, a song Kyungsoo became obsessed with in high school and never stopped loving. He has a nice voice, a really nice voice. Kyungsoo wants to sing, just a little, because it's his favorite song, but he hesitates. Everything is so strange; Baekhyun's a God who wrought death and destruction on the world and demanded sacrifices to stop the ruin, but here he is, singing some girl group song in Kyungsoo's bathroom.

Kyungsoo joins in for a few lines and then fades out, too tired to keep going. "Perfect," Baekhyun smiles, "you have a beautiful singing voice."

"Thanks." Kyungsoo returns the smile the best he can.

Kyungsoo tenses when Baekhyun's fingers rest just above the waistband of his jeans. "My foot." Baekhyun's eyes widen and he nods, rolling up the leg of Kyungsoo's pants and hissing at what he finds. "What," Kyungsoo asks, "what is it?" Kyungsoo hasn't gotten a good look at his ankle since right after he broke it. Did it get worse? Of course it got worse, he left it unattended for – he doesn't even know how long it's been flopping around unstabilized.

"Don't worry. I'll take care of it. It'll hurt before it feels better though. I'm going to have to move the bones back into place." Baekhyun encircles Kyungsoo's ankle with both hands and Kyungsoo's heart starts to speed up. "It'll just be a second, Soo. On three – or two? Three might have some negative feelings attached to it now, hm? One..."

Pins and needles march up from Kyungsoo's ankle and he whines. It's more uncomfortable than painful, but he's had too much discomfort, enough to last him for the rest of his life. Eventually, warmth surges up his legs and relaxes against the bathtub.

Baekhyun grins and holds Kyungsoo's normal-looking ankle up. Kyungsoo rolls and flexes with a little smile; it widens when he presses his bad foot against the wall of the tub and pushes and nothing hurts.

"All better. Anything else hurting before I finish cleaning you up?" Kyungsoo shakes his head. He eases his jeans off, keeping his boxers firmly _on_ , and drifts to the feeling of warm water sluicing over his legs.

He's shaken awake some time later. Baekhyun holds out the shower head for him to take. "I'm gonna grab you some more clothes. I figured you can clean off all the private bits by yourself." Kyungsoo nods and watches Baekhyun disappear out the bathroom door. Kyungsoo’s throat closes up a little. He can almost see the monsters crawling out from the bathroom cabinets, a hand jutting up from the water to grab at his throat.

Baekhyun sticks his head back through the door and it all melts away. "Your dogs are waiting for you, by the way, I had to lock them out of the bedroom so they didn't wake you up." Baekhyun holds up Kyungsoo’s favorite sleep-shirt and pants with a smile. “These okay?”

Kyungsoo nods. He laughs and then tears up at the realization that he's going to get to hold his dogs as soon as he's out of the tub. He's alive and he's okay. He survived.

Baekhyun helps him get dressed and then leaves him to crawl into bed on his own. Meokmul and Hoochoo are waiting for him. He cries quietly into their fur. He was so close to death so many times tonight. He doesn't know how he's going to cope with that. He doesn't know how he's going to cope with _anything_ that’s happened, but he's here now with his dogs and that's more than he thought he'd ever have again.

Kyungsoo doesn’t know where Baekhyun goes while he crawls into bed. He expects him to be there when he looks up, but the God is nowhere. Kyungsoo grabs tighter to his dogs and tries to tell himself he’s out of the hallways. He’s okay.

But if he’s not, if one of the monsters followed him home – he’s too tired, he can’t fight anymore. He doesn’t _want_ to.

Baekhyun comes back – Kyungsoo _knew_ he would come back. He watches Baekhyun from underneath the blankets and tries to find the words he wants to say. Baekhyun settles on the other side of the bed with his back against the headboard and stares right back. Kyungsoo can feel the challenge in the air, can almost feel Baekhyun in his head, telling him that he'll tell Kyungsoo whatever he asks. But he has to ask first.

It's when Hoochoo gets bored of licking Kyungsoo's face and pads across the bed to seek attention from Baekhyun that he finds his voice. "Why all the death? Why the sacrifices? Why did you kill all those people in the first place? Why..." _Why did you want to keep me alive?_ The last one hangs unspoken in the air between them.

Baekhyun runs his fingers through Hoochoo's fur as he thinks and hums to himself. Kyungsoo imagines a thousand different answers and somehow knows that every single one of them is incorrect. He has no idea what Baekhyun's reasoning for anything is. It's terrifying but it makes him want to understand, to know what's going on in Baekhyun's head.

"Short answer? They misunderstood me when I finally decided what I would take in exchange for peace," Baekhyun says with a shrug. "I said I wanted a body, they assumed I meant dead. Your soul has been floating around in pieces since I was made, and I remember being entranced by it the first time I ever saw it. There were ways to bring all those pieces together, but only by humans. I thought they could bring you into the world and then I would have you; that was worth peace to me. I would've had you and I could see that your soul wasn't meant for death and destruction, so I would've stopped.

"They gave me six sacrifices instead and the other Gods decided that was enough to warrant mercy. So I gave the cult that had started praying to me the monsters to kill the sacrifices and watched it all go on for thousands of years. Of course, I spent most of that time waiting for the pieces of your soul to find each other. And when they did, I found you and waited for the right time to make myself known. I actually live in the apartment next door, you know. I had planned to introduce myself tonight." Baekhyun laughs to himself and Kyungsoo stares, not sure how he feels about it all. "They took you though, so I took Two's place and made sure you were kept safe and the last of the cult was wiped out. I have you now, they are simply unnecessary."

There's a strange part of him that feels flattered. There's safety in Baekhyun's affection, and that settles an ancient, primal part of him. He knows, logically, that Baekhyun is morally reprehensible and that he should be pushing Baekhyun away.

But he's so tired. He's so fucking tired. He almost died so many times tonight and Baekhyun likely saved his life more times than he’s aware of. His brain has taken Baekhyun and tied him so strongly to safety that Kyungsoo feels helpless to do anything but trust him. And so, Kyungsoo reaches out and tentatively places his hand over Baekyhun's where it's resting on the blankets. "No more killing," he whispers, "no more."

Baekhyun nods. "For you, no more killing. I healed Chanyeol for you as well. He means so much to you; I couldn't leave him to die." Kyungsoo smiles, eyelids starting to turn heavy and pull down. "Go to sleep." The sunrise casts pretty shadows over them both and – and Kyungsoo does fall asleep, pulled down by exhaustion and the bone-deep knowledge that Baekhyun won't let anything get to him.

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you so much for reading! I hope you enjoyed! If you did, please leave a kudos and comment! Tell me what you liked, tell me what you want to see more of in my other fics! Tell me if this horror stuff is something you want to see more of! Also! feel free to come talk to me! I'm killmeDO on [Tumblr,](http://killmedo.tumblr.com/) [Twitter,](https://twitter.com/killmeDO?lang=en) and [Curious Cat!](https://curiouscat.me/killmeDO)I am way more responsive there and I like to talk about my fics in progress and stuff!!!
> 
> Happy Halloween!


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